News Star Wars Galaxy's Edge opening day reports - Disney's Hollywood Studios

[nickys]

He's sort of the display unit for the full-size R2 unit you can buy (just like it, though customizable) for $25,000.

R2D2 is cute, but not that cute. $25,000? Wonder who’ll be the first to buy one? Anyone on here thinking about it?

 

[mergatroid]

SWGE is not going to be a failure on any level. The reason people continue to create posts expressly aimed at claiming "it's a success", is merely loyalism manifesting as defense of their emotions.

I have yet to read one post that says the land is or will be a failure. BUT, there are multiple posts exclaiming how successful the land is, as if there was a need to come to it's defense. Why defend something that wasn't being attacked? Comparing wait times is not an attack. Comparing crowd levels is not an attack. Its just a comparison, the same as any other new product faces. If SWGE was anywhere near the level of "success" that so many people claimed it would be, there would be no discussion. Lines for Smugglers Run would be 10 hours long and there would be no need to "prove" anything. But the lines are not 10 hours long, ...and that's ok! It doesnt mean the land is a failure.

From my perspective there are a minority of posters on here who seem obsessed with trying to get digs in, or just choose to only comment on the negatives. Looking at the number of posts by some on the topic it seems strange why they'd spend so long arguing about something they claim to have little to no interest in, other than to stir the pot and troll for reactions.

When I say something like the above some folk who've made a negative comment about it get a bit defensive assuming I'm having a go at them, when I'm not. There are many Disney loving people who have every right to question decisions and changes to the park, many do this out of a deep love for the place and that's fine. My post isn't directed towards them or people who post once or twice about how they wished the land hadn't opened till ROTR was open etc.

There do appear to be some on here though who are repeatedly implying that it's a failure, one in particular working harder at it than anyone I've seen arguing that it's not. It's all ok though as time will tell and their opinion doesn't mean they're right, however I personally do feel there are those trolling on here trying to hide it as not being so (but failing in most attempts)

 

[nickys]

Born in 1977, Star Wars has been part of my life since birth. Something I've shared with my dad and now my daughter (she wore a different Star Wars onesie to daycare every day the week that TFA came out). I booked my trip the day that opening day was announced. So here is my Opening Day report: Good/Bad/Ugly Style

Basics

Arrived from Beach Club by Friendship Boat at 3:55AM. Was walking through the tunnel at 4:52AM. Went through the MF:GE line and piloted the Falcon by 8:14 AM. Then single-ridered it with a 45 minute wait. Drank the milk, ate a Ronto Wrap, met the Gatherers at Savi’s, shopped in the Marketplace, built a droid to my 4 year old daughter’s specs (she christened her Droid R2TUTU), a 30-minute single rider for MF:SR, drank a beer flight and a Rodian Ration at Oga’s, bought some holocrons and Kyber crystals at Doc Ondar’s, did some photopasses and explored the land. Walked out the way I came in at 5:07, for a 12:15 minute day in Batuu.

It was great. After booking this trip the day Disney announced opening day, then reading all the doom-and-gloom coming out of California, I was nervous. But I have to say I was impressed and cannot wait to get back. On to my specific thoughts:

The Spectacular

MF:SR –Right Pilot; Queue: Pulling the lever to make the Falcon jump to hyperspace was a dream come true, and the queue (all around the MF on the exterior and the interior, especially once you get into Hondo’s room, then the Chess Room, then the hallways and the cockpit) was breathtaking. I watched New Hope and Empire with my daughter this morning, and it was so cool telling her that I was in the Falcon, then showing her pictures of me at the chess table and in the halls!

View attachment 404232

Savi’s Workshop: this was an amazing experience; Disney storytelling at its finest; quality product; moving experience. In my opinion, it was well worth the cost. If my daughter wants to do this, I want to wait until she’s in the 9-11 range, just so she would appreciate it more. Here is my build (purple crystal; also bought yellow/red/green/blue - white was sold out):

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The Great

Oga’s Cantina: I had the beer flight and the Rodian Ration. Enjoyed three of the beers, and the jello shot was good and fun. We had a party of 7, and we got to sit at a booth with other folks. The atmosphere is great. It is tight, but the intimacy makes it feel like a packed bar (which it is). The charcuterie plate was interesting. They need more food options, and they could probably build 2-3 more of these around the land. Others I was with had varying reactions to their drinks. (If you are getting the flight to take home the barware, it is MASSIVE. I actually got Dok-Ondar's to ship it home for me, but I don't know if they're going to do that for long - they only charged me $4.95 to ship two of these and a Yub Nub glass).

View attachment 404235 View attachment 404236

The Look of the Land: It is gorgeous in dark and daylight, and you really don’t feel like you’re in MGM. Other than being able to see in to TSL due to the extended queue for Falcon, you would not be able to see any of the rest of the park. The colors are great, the attention to detail is immaculate.

Cast Members: Most stayed in character very well. They started around 2AM, and were really doing a great job under a deluge of humanity. Good mix of cheeky and friendly. Waitress at Oga’s was fantastic; the ladies at the hostess stand at Oga’s were doing great work; Gatherer at Savi’s was amazing; the folks leading you out of the Chess Room into the cockpits were great. Also, in the extended queue for MF that went into the backstage area, which was surrounded by the planters, one of the cast members welcomed us to “Galaxy’s Hedge.” We laughed way harder at that than we needed to….

Guests: 12+ hours, and I really didn’t see much in terms of bad guest behavior. Lot’s of folks were turned away at Savi’s and Oga’s, but they didn’t throw any fits. Despite the mass of humanity, everyone kept their cool. And you know what, I didn’t hear anyone B&Ming about every little detail. People seemed to genuinely be enjoying their time. It was great to spend time with tens of thousands of fellow fans letting their geek flags fly!

The Good

Droid Depot: This is chaotic, but neat. Great for younger kids, good for adults. I can’t imagine walking around with a boxed Droid for a long time, buy splurging for the backpack made it fine. It was fun when people would ask to take pictures of my Droid, or when it would start moving and beeping randomly.

View attachment 404237

MF:SR – Single Rider: The great was that I only waited 45 and 30 minutes using this instead of the 4.5 hours in the main queue at opening. The bad is that you were virtually guaranteed Engineer, with a slight possibility of Gunner. Which I understand on Opening Day, but hopefully this changes as the land ages. Also, the merge point is AFTER the Hondo animatronic, so you merge into the Chess Room.

Efforts to Thwart EBay Vultures: all shops had a limit of one of each item per person. So while this prevented me from buying two Christmas ornaments, which was disappointing, I appreciated their effort to keep folks from buying a bunch of merch to just put up for sale on EBay

Ronto’s Roasters: This is a cool little food stand. Like the animatronics, and the Ronto Wrap was delicious and filling. Also, the line moved quickly, in part because their menu is so small).

Blue Milk: I enjoyed this. To me, it was like liquefied Smarties. And the version with rum is also really good.

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Photopass Photographers: Lots of them around, and the lines moved quickly. Also, they are prepped on folks wanting pictures with their lightsabers/Droids/other toys, and they had a great overlay for Thursday:

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The Weird

The Shops: These are all TINY. Barely storefronts. So while there were lines, they do move really quickly. It was odd that there was a 2-3 hour wait at one point to get into Dok Ondar’s. Can anyone else but Disney convince people to wait that long for the right to buy some very expensive merch?

The Characters – We saw Rey, Chewy, Vi (?), Kylo, R2D2 and Stormtroopers. But it seemed like only Kylo and the Stormtroopers actually interacted with people. The Chewy I saw was acting perturbed and like he didn’t want anyone to see him or notice him (how in the world can you miss a 7-foot tall hairball?). Rey and Vi kept scurrying around. But just seeing them scurry around doesn’t really mean anything. So it was just strange to me.

Metallic Gift Card - Oddly, Droid Depot is the only place in the land to find that metallic gift card (which we forgot until we were about to leave, then backtracked to buy). Also, you can’t use your MagicBand to buy the gift card – cash or credit card only.

The Bad

Green Milk: My personal opinion is that it is nasty. There was no flavor to the actual drink, then a really grassy/treelike aftertaste took over.

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Holocrons: These are $50 a piece, and they are not good quality. Cheap plastic. Not easy to open to insert the crystals. Awkward to use. Don’t want to stay active. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to make the Jedi and Sith ones work together. Seriously, if you know how to do this, please PM me so I can make it work.

Datapad: I couldn’t get it to work on translations. It kept crashing when I was doing a job for Hondo. I really like how it tracked how much I earned on my Falcon rides, but then it gives you achievements that you assign, but it isn’t clear (to me) what that’s supposed to mean. I couldn’t get it to link up to the Falcon to hack. I know other people were able to use it and enjoy it, but it was more frustrating for me.

The Ugly

Green Milk w/Tequila: they took something awful and added rotgut tequila; if you buy this, do yourself a favor and get a rummy blue milk so you have something to wash it down with (that is what my buddy did)

Final Thoughts

I think this is a great start to what should be an incredible land, once its headlining attraction and additional streetmosphere are added in. It is great as-is (and yes, I mean it is great – to me, it is better than Pandora). They opened a land where the only free things to do are one ride, the datapad, and the restrooms. Every other thing that is offered costs you money. And yet tens of thousands of people showed up.

I am heading back in April with my wife and daughter (and, God willing, my parents). I cannot wait to share this with them.
Bright Suns, my friends. Bright Suns.

Thanks for the report.

I think the whole thing with Chewy and Rey is all about avoiding the stormtroopers. The videos of the the previews showed it, where they would even take kids with them. Guess it doesn’t work so well when there are crowds around, so you don’t see the whole “story”. Plus they couldn’t really grab a little kid and start hiding behind walls! Maybe they didn’t think that through very well?

 

[Stripes]

R2D2 is cute, but not that cute. $25,000? Wonder who’ll be the first to buy one? Anyone on here thinking about it?

There's nothing cute about him with the price tag attached

Nonetheless, I'm sure some sucker will buy it.

 

[VaderTron]

What you don’t seem to have accounted for is the additional wait time for MF for some.

People who arrived early had to wait for their entry to GE (via the virtual queue) before they could enter the queue for MF. So the wait time for MF is artificially capped, and to get the true wait time we probably need to add the average wait time for the virtual queue for however long it was in operation for. I think the typical wait time in the VQ was 2.5 hours. So at it’s peak the total wait time for MF was the posted time plus 150 minutes.

You can't count the virtual queue unless I can count the 7 hours till my afternoon Fastpass. That's just silly.

What you seem to be forgetting is the peak wait time for Frozen was 300 minutes when it first opened and stayed around 180 minutes all day for months.

Once again all rides have a "worth waiting that long" time to the average guest. MF:SR has a lower "worth waiting that long" time on days 2 and 3 that most rides have historically after they debuted.

 

[bclane]

Wait times right now:

 

[VaderTron]

Yes. The wait times at this very moment are because the majority of parks just opened. Hollywood opened hours before any other park, so most guests would choose the park that is open rather than the one that isn't.

 

[peter11435]

What you seem to be forgetting is the peak wait time for Frozen was 300 minutes when it first opened and stayed around 180 minutes all day for months.

Frozen has a significantly lower capacity than MF. It was plagued by downtimes during its initial launch. Is more impacted by guest induced delays thus resulting in lower utilization of theoretical capacity. And lastly Frozen has no height requirement thus not limiting any potential riders.

 

[mikejs78]

What you seem to be forgetting is the peak wait time for Frozen was 300 minutes when it first opened and stayed around 180 minutes all day for months.

Incorrect. It did open at 300 min (as did MF) but then dropped to 60 min by evening. The average wait time for the first day was 176 min. On day 2, it averaged 96 minutes, with a peak at opening of 240 min for the first hour or so, then falling back to about 90 min for most of the day.

Day 3 and 4 the wait times spiked to an average of 180 min and 120 min respectively. But the ride was closed for > 33% of the day, which inflates wait times.

Day 5 again the ride was open most of the day (only closed for 7% of the day) and the average wait time was back to 96 min.

 

[mikejs78]

Yes. The wait times at this very moment are because the majority of parks just opened. Hollywood opened hours before any other park, so most guests would choose the park that is open rather than the one that isn't.

You really are making a lot of leaps to justify your narrative....

 

[mergatroid]

You can't count the virtual queue unless I can count the 7 hours till my afternoon Fastpass. That's just silly.

What you seem to be forgetting is the peak wait time for Frozen was 300 minutes when it first opened and stayed around 180 minutes all day for months.

Once again all rides have a "worth waiting that long" time to the average guest. MF:SR has a lower "worth waiting that long" time on days 2 and 3 that most rides have historically after they debuted.

Is that researched data or just a stab in the dark, it wasn't 180 minutes when we went?

 

[bclane]

Yes. The wait times at this very moment are because the majority of parks just opened. Hollywood opened hours before any other park, so most guests would choose the park that is open rather than the one that isn't.

Due to extra magic hours, DHS opened at 6, MK and AK at 7.

 

[zombiebbq]

Final Thoughts

I think this is a great start to what should be an incredible land, once its headlining attraction and additional streetmosphere are added in. It is great as-is (and yes, I mean it is great – to me, it is better than Pandora). They opened a land where the only free things to do are one ride, the datapad, and the restrooms. Every other thing that is offered costs you money. And yet tens of thousands of people showed up.

Thank you for the review! What you say here is my ultimate worry. It's basically a land where you need to spend $$$$$ to fully enjoy. and i don't like the new Star Wars canon nearly enough to do that. I'm curious, do you plan on displaying your droid and saber when you get home? I wouldn't know what to do with them after the trip.... and boy they are expensive.

 

[planodisney]

 

[planodisney]

That’s as of 9:15am

 

[wdisney9000]

It's definitely a good time to be at WDW regardless of people's opinions of SWGE. Everytime I check MDE, the wait times in all the parks are low.

Our friends went to MK this morning and all the e tickets were walk on they said. Here is a pic they sent shortly after rope drop. Basically an empty park.

And I wasn't aware the new walkway next to the castle is open. It looks great! They sent a pic.

 

[mergatroid]

It's definitely a good time to be at WDW regardless of people's opinions of SWGE. Everytime I check MDE, the wait times in all the parks are low.

Our friends went to MK this morning and all the e tickets were walk on they said. Here is a pic they sent shortly after rope drop. Basically an empty park.
View attachment 404362

And I wasn't aware the new walkway next to the castle is open. It looks great! They sent a pic.
View attachment 404361

Nice pics there.

 

[mergatroid]

It's definitely a good time to be at WDW regardless of people's opinions of SWGE. Everytime I check MDE, the wait times in all the parks are low.

Our friends went to MK this morning and all the e tickets were walk on they said. Here is a pic they sent shortly after rope drop. Basically an empty park.
View attachment 404362

And I wasn't aware the new walkway next to the castle is open. It looks great! They sent a pic.
View attachment 404361

Actually just noticed that new path. They've done a nice job with it as it was originally quite narrow. Glad it's finished as we're taking some first timers in just over a week and I didn't want the castle view marred by building work.

 

[Higginbotham587]

You can't count the virtual queue unless I can count the 7 hours till my afternoon Fastpass. That's just silly.

What you seem to be forgetting is the peak wait time for Frozen was 300 minutes when it first opened and stayed around 180 minutes all day for months.

Once again all rides have a "worth waiting that long" time to the average guest. MF:SR has a lower "worth waiting that long" time on days 2 and 3 that most rides have historically after they debuted.

I’m sorry this is just plain anti-economic silliness. Yes there’s a decision point on entering the line. But there is also overall demand curve. The addressable market for FoP or Frozen might be the same for standby riders but the absence of FP for MFSR means it can actually cope with a greater percentage of that addressable market such that the demand curve tails off at a lower standby wait time.

 

[YodaMan]

R2D2 is cute, but not that cute. $25,000? Wonder who’ll be the first to buy one? Anyone on here thinking about it?

My understanding is that at least 2 have already sold.